I am (theoretically) writing two novels: a fantasy epic, and a series of short stories that act as a side project to the fantasy epic. When reading fantasy, I'm am often just as fascinated by the world in question as much as the actual story. I always want to know more about the random people who inhabit this world. They are what makes this world turn. Then in 2010, I read a book called Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, which is a short story novella set in a rundown apartment building in Cleveland, OH. Each story is about one of the residents in that building, and put together, the whole novella is about how the building forms a community around a vacant lot that they have turned into a community garden.
That gave me the idea for my short story novel. Set in the capital, each story is about regular people living in the capital city of my focal country, Delenia. For the most part, the people do not know one another, but through the course of the stories, they end up interacting with one another in some way. The fantasy novel is acting as a backdrop to what is happening to these people, and the idea is to see a snapshot of how there are regular people trying to live their lives despite these larger, fantastical things happening in the world.
My media project is a visualization of this, currently incomplete, short story novel. While I could have done it relatively easily in HTML, I decided in the long run, it would function better as an animated piece, so I decided I would spend some time re-teaching myself Flash (because I didn't have enough to do this month...). When you open the project, you get a general map of the city, with an approximation as to where each character currently is. Click on their name at the side, or on their dot on the city, and you are taken to their story. As the story progresses, you can follow their movements around the city. Clicking next and back will take you to the next page and last page, respectively, and on the last page of a story, there is a link to the main page. You can also click on Delen City at any point to take you back to the main page.
At this point, this project is all function and no form. It's very basic, visually. I wanted to focus on how I might put it together. Upon reflection, I have various ideas as to what I would like to do with this in the future. One is to cross link all of the stories. So, for example, as you are reading The Beggar Boy, you can see dots on the map of the other characters to see how they are moving around as The Beggar Boy is. The idea would be to be able to link the pages too, so that if you click on another character, it takes you to that point in their story. The next thing I'd like to do, and it was really the impetus for this project but I couldn't figure it out, is to create a scrollable timeline. This timeline would work on something like a slider, and dragging it around would allow you to see how the stories work together on a larger scale, as well as see how they match up temporally. Unfortunately, that concept was more then I could figure out in semester. Of course, the last thing I'd want to change is that I'd want to pretty it up. It's very bare bones, visually right now; there's a lot of sprucing that could be done. Again, all function and no form.
Delen City - Visual Media Experiment
I am (theoretically) writing two novels: a fantasy epic, and a series of short stories that act as a side project to the fantasy epic. When reading fantasy, I'm am often just as fascinated by the world in question as much as the actual story. I always want to know more about the random people who inhabit this world. They are what makes this world turn. Then in 2010, I read a book called Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, which is a short story novella set in a rundown apartment building in Cleveland, OH. Each story is about one of the residents in that building, and put together, the whole novella is about how the building forms a community around a vacant lot that they have turned into a community garden.
That gave me the idea for my short story novel. Set in the capital, each story is about regular people living in the capital city of my focal country, Delenia. For the most part, the people do not know one another, but through the course of the stories, they end up interacting with one another in some way. The fantasy novel is acting as a backdrop to what is happening to these people, and the idea is to see a snapshot of how there are regular people trying to live their lives despite these larger, fantastical things happening in the world.
My media project is a visualization of this, currently incomplete, short story novel. While I could have done it relatively easily in HTML, I decided in the long run, it would function better as an animated piece, so I decided I would spend some time re-teaching myself Flash (because I didn't have enough to do this month...). When you open the project, you get a general map of the city, with an approximation as to where each character currently is. Click on their name at the side, or on their dot on the city, and you are taken to their story. As the story progresses, you can follow their movements around the city. Clicking next and back will take you to the next page and last page, respectively, and on the last page of a story, there is a link to the main page. You can also click on Delen City at any point to take you back to the main page.
At this point, this project is all function and no form. It's very basic, visually. I wanted to focus on how I might put it together. Upon reflection, I have various ideas as to what I would like to do with this in the future. One is to cross link all of the stories. So, for example, as you are reading The Beggar Boy, you can see dots on the map of the other characters to see how they are moving around as The Beggar Boy is. The idea would be to be able to link the pages too, so that if you click on another character, it takes you to that point in their story. The next thing I'd like to do, and it was really the impetus for this project but I couldn't figure it out, is to create a scrollable timeline. This timeline would work on something like a slider, and dragging it around would allow you to see how the stories work together on a larger scale, as well as see how they match up temporally. Unfortunately, that concept was more then I could figure out in semester. Of course, the last thing I'd want to change is that I'd want to pretty it up. It's very bare bones, visually right now; there's a lot of sprucing that could be done. Again, all function and no form.